Ice formation presents an ongoing safety hazard in the operation of a multitude of mechanical systems, including power generation systems and a variety of transportation systems. For example, ice formation on aircraft surfaces presents a particular problem because it can quickly reduce the available power to lift ratio and result in unplanned and often catastrophic groundings. Undetected ice formation on other surfaces, such as walkways and roadways, can cause costly slip-related accidents for pedestrians and road vehicles, and any ice formation on crops can decimate yield in hours.
Conventional systems used to mitigate the problems associated with ice formation are typically inefficient and/or costly, and they often aren't timely or reliable enough in their ability to detect ice formation to allow for preemptive measures targeted to the specific areas and/or time periods experiencing ice formation. Instead, conventional mitigation systems waste energy and other resources either on applying measures when and/or where they aren't needed, or on melting or otherwise removing substantial aggregations of ice after they've formed and caused damage and/or general interruption of normal operation. Thus, there is a need for an improved methodology for detecting ice formation that is cost effective and substantially real-time and that can be used to detect ice formation in a variety of contexts reliably.